Most organizations lack a well-articulated blueprint of their business. While everyone can see their small piece of the puzzle, no one has visibility into the business as a whole. To address this lack of visibility, organizations must be able to visualize their business through formal business architecture. Yet, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Where there is no blueprint of a business, there is no corresponding blueprint of how the business relies on and is intertwined with IT architecture. As a result, it is difficult to determine the impact of key decisions, deploy cross-functional initiatives, optimize key resources and funding, and streamline communication and deployments between business and IT.

Just as the business functions within a series of silo-based vacuums, information technology implements various aspects of the business within a parallel series of silo based application and data architectures. This typically results in fragmented projects that chip away at but rarely address systemic redundancy, value gaps, technology gaps and other symptoms of poorly aligned business and IT architectures. This in turn stymies progress towards strategic realignment of business models, go to market strategies, customer and marketing requirements, and global expansion.

This training course provides attendees with the ability to establish and map formal blueprints of their business and IT architectures and use these blueprints to drive strategy, solution oriented roadmaps, funding and project deployments. Discussions draw upon on state-of-the-practice work by a number of organizations in business architecture and business / IT alignment and transformation. In addition, the sessions deliver state-of-the-art insights on business / IT collaboration.

Course Outline:

I. Business Architecture Alignment: Overview This module defines baseline aspects of business architecture and IT architecture to position the discussion of business / IT architecture alignment.

II. Business Strategy vs. Reality: Impacts of Misalignment This module discusses how business strategy and bottom line results have historically failed to align, particularly when it required cross-functional, cross-disciplinary coordination across business units and IT.

III. Business-Driven, Business / IT Architecture Transformation This module establishes the need for and approaches to establishing business-driven transformation approaches for business and IT. It includes a framework for moving from business views and business strategy through actionable approaches to business / IT transformation.

IV. Business / IT Architecture Alignment Process Overview This module recaps key aspects of business architecture for attendees and provides an overview of the business / IT mapping and alignment process to be discussed in later sections.

V. Business / IT Architecture Mapping This module establishes important business architecture to IT architecture mappings that enable IT to align and transform IT architectures based on business views and blueprints.

VI. Business / IT Architecture Transformation This module provides an approach to business architecture and IT architecture alignment using the dual focus: "value stream based" and "capability based" approach. This module focuses on business architecture / IT architecture mapping and phased alignment. It includes various approaches for incrementally transforming IT architecture and moving towards target architectures.

VII. Business / IT Collaboration Model: Basis for Business / IT Architecture Alignment This module introduces a proven collaborative governance model for business and IT and includes a discussion of the business architecture center of excellence and rapid response team concepts.

VIII. Business / IT Architecture Alignment Scenarios This module includes a walkthrough of common projects and how they would be approached from a business-driven perspective.

IX. Getting Started with Business / IT Architecture Alignment This module provides attendees with a starting point, a sample business-driven transformation roadmap and an overall approach to creating a business architecture / IT architecture alignment strategy that delivers real solutions and actionable results.

Unique Value of Course:

This course is based on practical, field-based work at numerous businesses, including commercial and government sector. It applies a standard approach as outlined in by the Business Architecture Guild’s Business Architecture Body of Knowledge (BIZBOK™) and draws from work that has led to business benefits and bottom line results.

Objectives:

Overview business architecture / IT architecture alignment concepts

Recap the basics of business architecture with a focus on capability, value, information and organization mapping

Leverage business architecture to incorporate business strategy, initiative planning and business-driven roadmap creation

Align business architecture in case management, business processes design concepts